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the barbed lyrics of flicker are a good example of bernard’s increasing interest in the state of the world as a subject over his own neuroses, though the serious message is nicely offset by the final line, the equal of one day’s capricious second verse. sumner: “neil tennant was talking about some group and he said their lyrics all sounded like they’d read it in the newspaper the day before. and karl bartos said that kraftwerk used to take negative comments that people made about them and write songs about them. so i thought: why don’t we combine the two things?” before late at night was shelved in the uk there were rumours that this would be the third single from twisted tenderness; in the end it proved to be the final track on the last electronic album, and it’s a song that’s worthy of that distinction.